Proteus

Proteus is a peaceful first-person exploration game set on a cheery pixellated island. There are no enemies. You can’t die. You can’t jump, shoot, dodge or pick anything up. Your only objective is to roam, observe and enjoy the evolving soundtrack triggered by your path. You’ll encounter more danger doing a lap of Kew Gardens than exploring Proteus’s serene, procedurally generated world.

"Your only objective is to roam, observe and enjoy the evolving soundtrack."Once you’ve spawned at sea and wandered ashore, you can start getting a feel for the island’s layout. Every playthrough rearranges a series of geographical elements that you’ll come to recognise, like an abandoned shack, some mysterious ruins, and a strange circle of stone animal carvings that regularly grace the peak of one of Proteus’s easily scaled mountains.

By day, there’s no purpose to your exploration. At night, you’ll discover a delightful way to shift the island to its next phase, which I won’t spoil. The change alters the island’s weather, colour palette and wildlife, and evolves the soundscape.

If you have a decent pair of headphones, plug them in for Proteus. The island responds to your rambling with a deeply satisfying emergent arrangement. The hop and flutter of Proteus’s creatures is accompanied by an electronic riff. The hoot of a digitised clarinet serves as the call of an owl. Flies swarm to the scattered notes of a frenzied cyber-fiddle. Rain falls in cascading chimes. I charged into the midst of every gaggle of monsters and absorbed the resulting wall of sound with childish glee.

"The joy faded in the latter stage - I found myself walking aimlessly, unstimulated and bored."Proteus captured me completely for the first 20 minutes. I found a weird hopping box creature, and chased it into the sea. I discovered a glittering fallen star that leapt away from my advances. I chased that into the sea as well. Its cheerful chirping fell silent as it vanished beneath the waves, replaced by the calm orchestral hum of the tides and a faint sense of regret. As darkness fell, the sky was suddenly sliced apart by a gleaming meteor shower. With no clear objectives, the joy of discovering the unexpected is the only reason to keep going. That was enough, for a while.

The joy faded in the latter stage of Proteus’s 45-minute arc. The creatures that make the first half feel so busy and interesting become increasingly sparse. I found myself walking aimlessly, unstimulated and bored. Proteus’s bubbling symphony has a disappointing coda, and you may feel shortchanged by its length.

The procedural generation offers a reason to restart, but the island felt deeply familiar in my playthroughs. Players on Proteus’s forums mention a couple of surreal, well-hidden secrets, but my experience each time was largely identical, and I found no deeper meaning or binding narrative to the island’s mysterious landmarks. Proteus is mood music. If you’re looking for a soothing green oasis to return to every now and then, this will do the job nicely.

There's been some heated discussion as to whether Proteus—Ed Key and David Tanaga's award-winning lo-fi ambient exploration game—can be called a game. All the back-and-forth boils down to just so much fooferaw. But, if you want to nail Proteus down to a more restrictive, AAA-centric definition of what a game is, then cartoonist Zac Gorman is here to help you.

Want to see more of Zac's work? Head over to his personal blog and game-themed site Magical Game Time. If you're feeling commercial, you can buy prints and shirts here. He'll be back on Kotaku with a new comic same time next month!

BAFTA have released the nomination shortlist for the upcoming 2013 round of their Video Game awards. PS3 exclusive Journey tops the nomination leaderboard - it's up for eight categories. But Telltale's The Walking Dead and Ubisoft's Far Cry 3 aren't far behind, receiving nods in seven and six categories respectively. There's also strong indie recognition. Dear Esther is nominated for five awards, Thomas Was Alone for three, and both Proteus and Super Hexagon both receive a mention.

The ceremony takes place on March 5th, and will streamed live on Twitch.tv. Tune in to find out if we live in a world where CoDBlOps2 can be given an award for "Game Innovation".

Opinions on Ed Key and David Kanaga's newly released game Proteus are likely as mixed as the crowd at a Justin Bieber/Mastodon double-bill. Personally, I think it's just lovely. It relaxes me, which certainly isn't true of most games I play these days. It's a rare game that just sort of is, and it manages to forge a connection with nature that's more spiritual than photorealistic. It's got soul, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And it's mysterious.

But hey, maybe you're not sold. After all, there have been plenty of folks making the (increasingly pointless-feeling) argument that because there are no clear-cut rules, Proteus isn't a game. (Personally, I made it a game: It's a game for me to see if I can hear all of Kanaga's music, and find all of the music-making little critters. I'm the only one keeping score, though.) Maybe you just want to see it in action to get what people are talking about.

If you'd like to get a sense of what Proteus is all about, check out this commentary-free playthrough by YouTube user OmGarrett. Watching really isn't the same as actually exploring on your own, but that doesn't mean it's not a pleasant, relaxing thing to do.

Proteus, which went on sale on Steam on Wednesday, is the latest art piece to kick up a fuss over whether something deserves to call itself a game. Twitter's self-appointed video game cop has weighed in on the discussion, as have thousands of his deputies in message boards and comments. Now one of Proteus' creators has his say.

"I find this rather burdensome to write," begins Ed Key, who made the game with David Kanaga, and I feel his pain, even though I don't have much interest in his game. Key is responding to this piece on Gamasutra, which said, "It's currently not cool at all to say that you didn't enjoy Proteus, or to even hint at the idea that this isn't one of the most important video game releases of the here and now ."

Speaking as a member of the games-writing cabal, I didn't get that memo. But if we're going straw-man here, then I'm going to say this is a basically stupid slapfight perpetuated by the idea that everything in video gaming is a zero-sum proposition, and that the existence of a game one doesn't approve of deprives more meritorious games of praise, attention, money or whatever.

Back to Key. "I don't call Proteus an antigame or a notgame," he said, "I call it a game, but obviously I am at pains to make it clear that it doesn't have explicit challenge or "winning." Key points out that SimCity or The Sims also have been said, by some, to be "not games."

"Proteus doesn't have or even aspire to the same systemic complexity as SimCity, but it does have systems," Key says. "It's just 95 percent optional whether you engage with them and it generally doesn't give you any confirmation when you do. There's a design reason for this."

There seems to be a larger reason that it's worth standing up to this navel-gazing game/notgame argument. "Outside of academic discussions, encouraging a strict definition of "game" does nothing but foster conservatism and defensiveness in a culture already notorious for both," Key says. Amen. But this is video gaming, where everyone feels the instant and constant need to express their disappointment in something they never had any intention of playing.

Last year, I wrote about the beautiful digital island found inside of Proteus.Proteus is an exploration game where the world is reactive to the player. Stones will hum as you walk by. Frogs will sing to you. I'd tell you more but it's best that you experience it yourself; there's nothing quite like it.

And now, it's out for the public to enjoy on Steam. Check out the trailer above, which gives you an idea of just how gorgeous Proteus looks and sounds. It's a dream-like place you'll want to get lost in.

You can buy Proteus here on sale for $8.99. If you liked Journey, I'd reckon this is right up your alley.

Proteus is Now Available on Steam and is 10% off until Feb 6th at 10AM PST!

Proteus is a game about exploration and immersion in a dream-like island world where the soundtrack to your play is created by your surroundings. Presented and controlled like a classic first-person shooter, the primary means of interaction is simply your presence in the world. The procedurally generated islands are home to creatures natural and imagined, tranquil valleys and ruins with magical properties. Think Doom meets Brian Eno.